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. 2022 Nov 22;17(11):e0267530.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267530. eCollection 2022.

High prevalence of burnout syndrome among medical and nonmedical residents during the COVID-19 pandemic

Rebeca da Nóbrega Lucena Pinho  1 , Thais Ferreira Costa  2 , Nayane Miranda Silva  1 , Adriana Ferreira Barros-Areal  3 , André de Matos Salles  4 , Andrea Pedrosa Ribeiro Alves Oliveira  5 , Carlos Henrique Reis Esselin Rassi  6 , Ciro Martins Gomes  7 , Dayde Lane Mendonça da Silva  8 , Fernando Araújo Rodrigues de Oliveira  9 , Isadora Jochims  10 , Ivan Henrique Ranulfo Vaz Filho  11 , Lucas Alves de Brito Oliveira  12 , Marta Alves Rosal  13 , Marta Pinheiro Lima  14 , Mayra Veloso Ayrimoraes Soares  10 , Patricia Shu Kurizky  15 , Viviane Cristina Uliana Peterle  16 , Ana Paula Monteiro Gomides  17 , Licia Maria Henrique da Mota  18 , Cleandro Pires de Albuquerque  19 , Cezar Kozak Simaan  20 , Veronica Moreira Amado  5
Affiliations

High prevalence of burnout syndrome among medical and nonmedical residents during the COVID-19 pandemic

Rebeca da Nóbrega Lucena Pinho et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, health professionals have been working under extreme conditions, increasing the risk of physical and mental illness. We evaluated the prevalence of burnout and its associated factors among postgraduate student residents in health professions during the global health crisis.

Methods: Healthcare residents were recruited from all across Brazil between July and September 2020 through digital forms containing instruments for assessing burnout (Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI)), resilience (brief resilient coping scale (BRCS)) and anxiety, stress and depression (depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)). Additionally, the relationships between burnout and chronic diseases, autonomy and educational adequacy in the residency programme, personal protective equipment (PPE), workload and care for patients with COVID-19 were evaluated. The chi-square test, Student's t test, Pearson's correlation test and logistic regression were performed.

Results: A total of 1,313 participants were included: mean (standard deviation) age, 27.8 (4.4) years; female gender, 78.1%; white race, 59.3%; and physicians, 51.3%. The overall prevalence of burnout was 33.4%. The odds (odds ratio [95% confidence interval]) of burnout were higher in the presence of pre-existing diseases (1.76 [1.26-2.47]) and weekly work > 60 h (1.36 [1.03-1.79]) and were lower in the presence of high resilience (0.84 [0.81-0.88]), autonomy (0.87 [0.81-0.93]), and educational structure (0.77 [0.73-0.82]), adequate availability of PPE (0.72 [0.63-0.83]) and non-white race (0.63 [0.47-0.83]). Burnout was correlated with anxiety (r = 0.47; p < 0.05), stress (r: 0.58; p < 0.05) and depression (r: 0.65; p < 0.05).

Conclusions: We observed a high prevalence of burnout among residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual characteristics and conditions related to the work environment were associated with a higher or lower occurrence of the syndrome.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Multivariate logistic regression analysis of predictors associated with burnout (OLBI) among health residents.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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